Re:The rise of OpenStreetMap: A quest to conquer Google’s ma...
by c0nsumer on Sunday March 02, 2014 @09:57AM
(#7329295)
The problem I have with editing Google Maps is that the tools are so much harder to use than OSM's. I really, really enjoy using JOSM and can really improve things in a short time.
Google's web-based tool is much slower, and the dependency-chain approval process can make what should be a quick edit into a multi-day process. [1]
One example is a local park's hiking trails which are closed to cycling traffic. I'm do a lot of local biking and regularly use Google Maps to plot routes, so when I saw that the hiking trails had been somehow marked as cycling routes (which Google was directing people along!) I went to change them. Two hours later and I still wasn't done with simply unflagging two square miles of hiking trails.
Had this been in a JOSM-like interface it'd be 15 minutes at most, including committing the change back.
I understand that Google doesn't want to make changing things too easy, lest there be all manner of vandalism and personal-motive edits, but it's currently hard enough that those of us serious about making substantive changes have the tools getting in our way.
Google's web-based tool is much slower, and the dependency-chain approval process can make what should be a quick edit into a multi-day process. [1]
One example is a local park's hiking trails which are closed to cycling traffic. I'm do a lot of local biking and regularly use Google Maps to plot routes, so when I saw that the hiking trails had been somehow marked as cycling routes (which Google was directing people along!) I went to change them. Two hours later and I still wasn't done with simply unflagging two square miles of hiking trails.
Had this been in a JOSM-like interface it'd be 15 minutes at most, including committing the change back.
I understand that Google doesn't want to make changing things too easy, lest there be all manner of vandalism and personal-motive edits, but it's currently hard enough that those of us serious about making substantive changes have the tools getting in our way.